When accidents happen in the mining industry, a lot is at risk, be it the drivers and other staff, vehicles and machinery, and other valuable materials. Mining truck accidents can sometimes end up in court when there’s major damage, and it’s important to determine who or what was at fault. That’s when mining truck accident investigation is required.
At Gilmore Engineers, we’ve worked on countless cases to provide our expertise in understanding how and why accidents have occurred, and how to prevent them from happening again. Our forensic engineering experts provide high-quality mining truck accident analysis and crash reconstruction, with over 30 years of field experience.
Today we’d like to tell you all about how this process works.
How to Tell if You Need an Expert Forensic Engineer for a Mining Truck Accident
What Does a Mining Truck Accident Expert Witness Do?
In legal cases, it’s extremely important that everyone involved knows exactly what happened and how. Between people’s biases and their lack of understanding of physics and how crashes occur, typically it’s difficult to come to this clarity on the event without an expert. Therefore, the mining truck accident expert witness’s job is to conduct a forensic investigation into what happened and then craft a report for the court, helping all parties but ultimately the jury, judge, or magistrate understand the accident. This allows the court to come to a conclusion on who was at fault, who therefore is responsible for damages, and finally what the best way to proceed may be.
We have to have strong experience and knowledge in:
- Mining Engineering: The operations of the mining site and equipment, such as the large trucks.
- Accident Reconstruction: Forensic skills and physics knowledge to reconstruct the event and understand what happened.
- Safety Regulations: Understanding of the laws surrounding the equipment but also the policies and health and safety efforts of the mining organisation.
- Vehicle Mechanics: Knowledge of how large mining trucks work, where things may go wrong, and if the person responsible for maintaining the vehicle did their job properly to reduce risk of mechanical failures.
- Driver Weaknesses: Understanding of how distractions, fatigue, and more can be the cause of accidents in which the driver may be at fault.
How Does This Process Work?
With a deep understanding of how mining truck accidents work, what occurs in the mining industry, and how to reconstruct these events, our expert engineer witnesses analyse the accident by making calculations and drawing conclusions on aspects like: pre-incident speeds, stopping distances, skid marks, field of vision of drivers, and pre-impact vehicle positions. Using this, we create our truck accident reconstruction and report to display what occurred to cause the accident, and what the consequence was.
Here are some examples of how we may work on different cases:
- Truck Rollover: For these cases we look at the stability of the truck and if there was any mishandling of the vehicle to contribute to the rollover. The terrain is also analysed, as well as the driver and if they were at fault, for example if they had the experience and alertness to be driving.
- Collision: If a mining truck struck another vehicle or a pedestrian, we would do a forensic reconstruction of the accident, using skid marks and damage to assess speed and directions, therefore seeing who was at fault.
- Steering Failure: We would examine the steering system to see what part failed, as well as looking into maintenance records to see if the vehicle was in roadworthy condition.
Who Do We Work With on Mining Truck Accident Cases?
Typically, we’re hired by lawyers who are working on a case where a mining truck accident has occurred. However we may also be hired by the company, the driver, or others who were involved. We may even be hired by the insurance company to help see who is at fault for claims. At Gilmore Engineers, we’ve provided over 1,500 reports for cases before the District, Supreme, and Federal Courts.
Most often, our services are sought by lawyers for accident analysis. This is especially common for larger cases, like claims for serious personal injury or death, significant property damage, or the lawyer’s clients being charged with a serious offence. The evidence we gather and provide supports legal arguments and offers valuable insights into the circumstances surrounding an accident.
Deciding if You Need an Expert Engineer Witness
If you’ve been part of a mining truck accident – whether you were the driver, company, or anyone else affected – or if you’re a lawyer working on a mining truck accident case, hiring an expert engineer to be a witness is a great way to clarify what happened and help the court reach justice.
At Gilmore Engineers, we have an impressive track record and decades of experience to our name, with expert engineers who offer professionalism, ethics, and high quality across our work in your case. When deciding whether you want to hire an expert witness, look for someone who has proven experience and good reviews. They should have high confidence, and show their quality through their website and customer service.
Your expert witness can provide their reconstruction and report to you, or even go to court on your behalf to display what happened. We discover information that non-experts just can’t reach on their own, and display it in a way the court can understand. Make sure your witness can provide a high quality report that contains forensic information like:
- Pre-incident speed analysis
- Passenger car head-on impacts
- Skid mark analysis
- Head light and tail light on/off analysis
- Pedestrian impacts
- Determination of seat belts being used
- Stopping distances calculation
- Position of vehicle pre-impact
- Motorcycle and Bicycle impacts
- Tyre, suspension, brakes, steering and other component failure
Contact Us
Looking for an expert witness engineer with speciality in mining truck accident investigation? We work across Australia from our base in Brisbane, offering both local and remote (online) services to clients.
Get in touch with us today for a consultation on how we can help you.